tated.

"It's a railway station," said she. "No, I'm wrong, I think it is a
theatre."

Then she smiled and kissed Jeanne's hair, at last confessing as
before: "I do not know what it is, my love."

So they continued to gaze on Paris, troubling no further to identify
any part of it. It was very delightful to have it there before them,
and yet to know nothing of it; it remained the vast and the unknown.
It was as though they had halted on the threshold of a world which
ever unrolled its panorama before them, but into which they were
unwilling to descend. Paris often made them anxious when it wafted
them a hot, disturbing atmosphere; but that morning it seemed gay and
innocent, like a child, and from its mysterious depths only a breath
of tenderness rose gently to their faces.

Helene took up her book again while Jeanne, clinging to her, still
gazed upon the scene. In the dazzling, tranquil sky no breeze was
stirring. The smoke from the Army Bakehouse ascended perpendicularly
in light cloudlets which vanished far aloft. On a level with the
houses passed vibrating waves of life, waves of all the life pent up
there. The loud voices of the streets softened amidst the sunshine
into a languid murmur. But all at once a flutter attracted Jeanne's
notice. A flock of white pigeons, freed from some adjacent dovecot,
sped through the air in front of the window; with spreading wings like
falling snow, the birds barred the line of view, hiding the immensity
of Paris.

With eyes again dreamily gazing upward, Helene remained plunged in
reverie. She was the Lady Rowena; she loved with the serenity and
intensity of a noble mind. That spring morning, that great, gentle
city, those early wall-flowers shedding their perfume on her lap, had
little by little filled her heart with tenderness.

CHAPTER VI.

One morning Helene was arranging her little library, the various books
of which had got out of order during the past few days, when Jeanne
skipped into the room, clapping her hands.

"A soldier, mamma! a soldier!" she cried.

"What? a soldier?" exclaimed her mother. "What do you want, you and
your soldier?"

But the child was in one of her paroxysms of extravagant delight; she
only jumped about the more, repeating: "A soldier! a soldier!" without
deigning to give any further explanation. She had left the door wide
open behind her, and so, as Helene rose, she was astonished to see a
soldier--a very